As one of the South Bend campus accessibility liaisons, Steve Sigety sees accessibility through a practical lens: as part of making information usable, searchable, and teachable for everyone. Through campus conversations and consultations, he is helping faculty move beyond compliance toward seeing accessibility as something that benefits everyone, not just those who require it.
Sigety is a librarian at Schurz Library. He routinely manages databases and e-resources, vetting vendor accessibility plans as part of his day-to-day work. When the opportunity to become an accessibility liaison arose, it felt like a natural fit.
Through monthly meetings and webinars as part of the Digital Accessibility Liaisons Program, Sigety has picked up a lot of new knowledge. One session that stood out covered making scientific notation, mathematics, and diagrams accessible, an area he hadn't explored before. He was surprised to learn that MathPix, a tool for making mathematical content accessible, is already built into Canvas. He describes the experience of learning about all the available tools as "really interesting and really gratifying."
Armed with what he has learned, Sigety has been sharing that knowledge with instructors across his campus. He speaks about accessibility at department meetings and other campus gatherings when the opportunity arises, reminding faculty about the tools, webinars, and support available to them. When faculty come to him directly, consultations often focus on finding accessible sources through library databases rather than relying on scanned PDFs. He has seen more accessibility-specific consultations than in the past. Beyond his liaison role, Sigety is also part of the South Bend teaching center's Accessibility Allies, a campus-level group that works to spread awareness and offer hands-on support locally.
He has also been applying what he has learned directly to the course he teaches, Introduction to Information Literacy. Currently teaching it online, he goes through his course week by week to make sure everything is accessible. He runs PowerPoint slides through the accessibility checker built into PowerPoint and uses the accessibility tools in Canvas to check his course pages. Even for him, making sure nothing slips through has been the real challenge.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from his time in the program is one he now tries to pass along to every faculty member he works with: accessibility is for everyone. "Everyone can use these tools depending on their particular need at the time," he says. A student who only has time to review lecture notes while doing laundry may not be able to sit down to read, but they can listen. "Accessibility is for everyone," he says, "and giving more options is really helpful." His hope is that for faculty, accessibility becomes just a natural part of building a course, not a one-time fix.
For more resources and self-paced accessibility courses, visit the Accessibility.IU website.
